What are your bad habits as a player or dmn

Come and share your short comming in the world of TTRPGs.
As a DM I can't keep a serious tone throughout an entire session, as a player I always end up as the DM.

As a DM, I often choke up when the actual session starts. I can't properly describe things anymore, every combat encounter I have to improvise becomes a fight in a more or less plain room and my abililty to do voices for NPCs just disappears.

It's fucking frustrating, and the main reason that while I love to DM, I hate my DMing.

As a Player I guess I get to exited about these kind of games and pester the DM to hell and back. I just don't have anyone else to talk about Tabletop...I'm only starting so my That Guyness is still in incubation phase.

As a DM. I don't DM. I barely know the rules.

There's always a lesbian couple.

Right there with you man. When I'm not currently DMing I come up with these great monologues with grand voices, but when I actually get going, I just can't do it.

My biggest flaw as a DM is that I just can't get myself to actually prepare combats with stats, which means I usually have to force myself to do it a couple of hours before we start.

I am currently just building a small repertoire of encounter templates for myself, so that I have a few interesting gimmicks I can slap onto an encounter when they run into one.

But yeah. It sucks. It's strange though; I have some stage training, and I have given presentations on a monthly basis to large groups with no issues whatsoever. So why does a fucking game with a few of my mates cause me so much trouble?

I give all of the female PCs which is usually ALL the PCs a lesbian waifu.

As a player, my characters sometimes do evil shit even though they are supposed to be good. As superheroes, for example, grappling an enemy and using him as a weapon against another enemy, even when he falls unconscious. Still as superheroes, mind-control an otherwise neutral-stupid villain into helping us against the main antagonist.

As a GM, I don't know the rules by heart and as a result combat slows down considerabily, unfortunately.

I'd play in your games

Was I wrong to tell the dm the pic he sent was gay?
>never teach squirrels D&D XD

My biggest flaw as a GM would be fretting so much over making a good enough campaign that nothing is ever good enough and thus never running anything.

As a player I keep trying to move the plot forward instead of exploring the world or talking to NPCs. When the world is at stake I don't feel like I have the time to chit-chat with random contacts, even if they're well-written and interesting. That may sound like I'm justifying my behaviour, but to be honest I know that the rest of the party (and the GM) want to take things slow and I do it anyway. Part of me thinks that it's because I don't want the game to devolve into social drama and pointless sidequests, but I know that it's just because I'm horrible at the 'role' aspect of role-playing, so I push for adventure and combat encounters so I don't have to show how bad I am at social interaction in-character.

As a GM I'm much the same way, somewhat in reverse. My settings feel sparely populated and uninteresting because I don't want the sessions to devolve into hour-long chats with NPCs about unimportant stuff. I build adventures around the life goals of the party members, introducing only the NPCs, locations, encounters, and plot points that I think work towards those life goals. It's not 'railroading', more like asking the players where they want to go in advance and building that (and only that) content for the next session. The adventures are open-ended and have lots of choice and decisions the players can make, but they're by no means a sandbox.

Ultimately I run campaigns like that because I know I can't come up with interesting NPCs or locations on the fly, and I feel like my players know this. If they step outside the 'borders' of the adventure I have nothing prepped. I've tried running games in pre-made settings to shore this problem up but they've never worked well for me. I feel like this leaves my campaigns feeling narrow and empty, and I envy my current GM who is so good at worldbuilding and writing all those little details. It's a shame that I'm shit at appreciating how much work he puts in.

As a player, I don't really know. My DM has told me I'm his favorite player because I have the right balance of joking around and staying on track. I'll admit to breaking away from the rest of the party a little too often as one of my characters (who's solo due to other events involving a character death now, anyway), but it's always for the benefit of the group.

As a DM, I may be running things a little too open-world, but my players seem to like it in one of my campaigns. (I'm running two with two groups.) The one who doesn't seem to be doing well with that seems to be the type who just want to be railroaded through the story. My other group (been with them longer) loves it, they still have a clear goal in mind but can go about it however they want. Helps that I can be spontaneous with my story (I've already thrown slavers, temporary NPC companions for hire, and military general, a cult which originally wasn't going to be in the story, and a pair of goblin hirelings that's going to be working for the hobgoblin barbarian PC at them.)

tl;dr: What works for some doesn't work for everyone. I need to get better at adapting to my groups as a DM.

As a DM, I often have great trouble getting a campaign started. Once things are underway and the party is sufficiently hooked things tend to go smoothly, but I usually have to struggle to get to that point.

As a player, I tend to slide into a sort of "default character" where if I'm not doublechecking myself regularly I'll end up playing every character exactly the same way.

I rely too much on my ability to just come up with shit on the fly. I want to prepare more than a few things for a session, I really do. But I have a full-time job and a wife and a house to work on.
>excuses can be reasons

Captcha, I'm getting tired of looking at store fronts...

Your DM sounds like a faggot.

I'm sometimes way too rigid with the "that's what my character would do" mindset, either bullying the party into going along with it or causing intra-party strife.

>Dm forgets to tell us something/misremembering what happened last session
>we tell him that he forgot
>Gets super pissy(which is hilarious seeing as he's a ~50 year old man)
>Wr have to drill it into his head that this is what happened/this is what we all forgot
>Constantly tries to say it's our fault
>Eventually relents after half the players show him he's wrong
Is fine after that, but Christ on a cross it's annoying when this happens

>As a player I keep trying to move the plot forward instead of exploring the world or talking to NPCs. When the world is at stake I don't feel like I have the time to chit-chat with random contacts, even if they're well-written and interesting.

I'm not saying it's ideal behavior, since ideally there would be a balance, but I'm pretty sure I know a few GMs who'd kill to have a player like that.

>thread about your own shortcomings
>bitches about his DM instead

Well, at least it's immediately obvious what your shortcoming is.

Yeah I can't read, obviously

>Be in 50s
>memory isn't what it used to be
>lose concentration more easily
>"Surely this can't be happening already!"
>it is
>Fighting despair over the inevitable mental decline
>DM as a hobby to keep the mind active and escape things
> Players begin to notice little mental lapses
> Pretend it's fine
> Everyone at the table starts weighing in against me
>Accept defeat
>Slip a little further into the void

This is basically me in my early 20s, my fucking brain isn't good for anything other than sending signals to my dick half the time

Except for shit I don't give a fuck about, that's got a all access pass to my memory.

I get stressed out and feel guilty really easily. If I procrastinate on prepping for a session, I feel guilty. If I have to wrap up a session early, I feel guilty. If I have to CANCEL a session, for any reason, oh god I just want to curl up and die.

So then I stress out trying not to do that. Which just makes me panic over possibly fucking up more. Which in turn makes me fuck up more...

> I need tons of prep.
> Procrastinate.
> Get anxiety before a game starts.
> Unsure about the quality of my sessions.
> Let players dictate pace, it's incredibly slow.
> Hang a looming threat over the players.
> Players complain about lack of filler combat.
> Players stop playing before threat manifests.

Any advice?

Start dropping obvious hints as to what their "goal" should be. Like, if you want some filler combat, instead of just making it random wolves, make it a bunch of henchmen on a mission from the bad guy who just happen to run into your party and want to kill them to get rid of witnesses. If the party wins, they have a chance to learn more about the bad guy's plans, and might even get a hint about what the next phase of his masterplan is, and/or how to stop those plans.

It's not railroading since the players are still able to ignore the hints if they want to, but it gives them a clear direction which they get to "discover" themselves without you just feeding it to them.

>DM takes himself that seriously

abort abort!

wew lad your DM is a huge faggot

abort your group asap

Thanks user. I'm trying to achieve some kind of balance, right now I feel compelled to keep pursuing the main plot with laser-like focus. The big problem is that my GM really appreciates it when players explore his world, because he makes tons of NPCs and lore for it, and I'm fairly certain that he doesn't appreciate me 'rushing' him.

I tend to get lazy as things go on, and half-ass everything.

I don't ever prepare anything. I've always been really good at improvising, and so that's what I do. Never had anyone complain or anything about my style so I guess it's cool. But I can never follow a plan for a plot, or even usually get from point a to point b in a story that I have in my head for my games without just accidentally inserting more story bits.

On the player spectrum, I always go a bit overboard making my character and how he acts a bit too complicated, let me give you an example, I have a character im running right now who is going on a quest that would let him change one thing in history, this character has spent his entire life running from his problems and I have no fucking clue what he would actually change in character. (Whether he would go through with changing anything at all).

On the dm spectrum, I mostly keep things on the up and up, although even I engage in casual railroading (Albeat trying to not make it obvious) For example I was running a campaign where the players were supposed to enter a quarantine zone to escape from these guards, and they instead chose to fight, so I had to keep sending guards over and over hoping they would get the hint.

Advice time? Advice time.

If your players don't complain you're doing something right. Maybe talk with them and see if they're bothered by it but too polite to tell you, that happens sometimes. Either way, consider writing down some 'beats' for your plot and maybe some descriptions before you sit down. While not strictly necessary, prep can be a handy tool for improving your game.

Maybe he could learn to face his problems and decide that changing the past isn't necessary? You could spin it that trying to change the past is his way of avoiding dealing with the reality of the present and the consequences of his actions. Facing those consequences, whether he wins or loses, would be an interesting way to introduce character development.

Hey, sometimes if that's where the adventure is, you need to lead your players that way. I find that the best balance is to focus on what the players want to do in the campaign, then build the adventure around that. If they say they want to fight zombies and search for a cure, you can totally nudge them towards that quarantine zone with tons of zombies and the rumours of a cure. Sometimes you need to make the 'bait' on the plot hook obvious enough that they know where the adventure is. Nine times out of ten your players will head for an adventure they requested and not faff about. The tenth time you just need to say "Hey guys, you wanted an adventure and it's that-a-way. If you want to do something else I can wing it, but you'll probably have more fun on the quest you wanted." Tailoring your quests for your group is the key.

For the character that was actually what i was thinking, unfortunately he at one point made a promise to a spirit that he would use his time change to prevent something the spirit regretted, although I am planning to have him to see the spirit again and proclaim the spirit is just trying to run from his problems just like he did. He would then use his time change just to prevent his death (The campaign takes place in a form of purgatory). Then go back to his home kingdom to face the problems he caused.

As for the whole situation when I was a dm that is a long fucking story.

Do you mind sharing what you have?

>go on Veeky Forums when it seems like ridiculous stuff is going on like, giant badger running through the streets
>accidentally make characters racist to different races

>SUPREME OVERLORD OF THE ENDLESS HEAVENS!

Sounds like hes a fag and probably got triggered

Sure. I'll try to make a thread about it when I get to the computer with those resources.

charge your phone fuckin pleb

I cant voice npcs or describe places very well but I make combat so retardedly deadly(retardeadly?) and cunning that the minmaxing nerds I call players nervously laugh every time I gander at the monster manual and I always make my magical items powerful as fuck.

I have the same problem - most of my nice NPCs become stuttering idiots and most of the evil NPCs just end up sort of quippy.
I'm also really bad at saying "yes" too much, and leaving too many questionable NPCs isolated with no way to defend themselves if the players decide to go murderhobo. AND I suck at combat. I had a fucking CR13 die to 5 level 4s last session (in 5e) because even for a creature with a ton of resists, 100 HP doesn't get you very far without putting a lot of thought into every turn.

After reading the thread i'd like to add - I still DM because I realized the rest of my group sucks even more at it, and they don't care how well I DM as long as I'm not intentionally fucking them over or making every session a boring 5 hour combat slugfest. You only have to be slightly self-aware to be a good enough DM. No one ever complains on Veeky Forums about "my DM stutters a little too much" or "my DM isn't a master of combat"

You sound like my last DM - he gives retardedly high AC and damage to everything we fight, even if it's a random zombie at lv 1 it's going to have like 18 AC and deal 3d6 a hit, and gives us ridiculously damaging weapons as well. It just turns fights into a game of who gets lucky enough to get that 1/4 chance they have to actually hit something. And with how powerful the magical items are, we kind of stop caring about upcoming class features since they pale in comparison.

Just food for thought in case you're similar, but I think my DM's a severe case of bad combats.

as a player , i am pretty much focused on roleplaying in a way that i very often throw away the mcguffin/ dont give a fuck about other plothooks that would initiate some epic quests. my character is by default not interrested in being some kind of choosen one since heroes tend to live short lives

I cannot differentiate NPCs except by name and title. They all look and sound like me with a funny hat.

>tfw the problems I have in life are problems other people have in a game
Starting to understand why all of my characters are prone to depression.

a suspicious amount of loli monstergirls/beastfolk

i also forget to put any brothels on the city map

I am too easy to pull into shenanigans, even when it's against my character's best interests. Like, someboody will put forward and idiotic suggestion and i drop all pretense of characterisation and go all in on making it as crazy as possible. This is how we started a Stand Alone Complex in Shadowrun 3e, or that time we almost burnt a large Brettonian city to the ground in WHFRP 2e, "The Great Commoragh Caper" in Deathwatch.

I question the DM's discretion about everything and think I could do a better job but I never want to DM for fear of failing.

A habit I've tried to break is trying to force pc's back on the rails when they go off on tangents. The problem is the more freedom I give to players in how they approach plot points the further they go off rails. Recently I had a player who attempted to do the exact same thing three times, each attempt not only failing to resolve the problem but making it actively worse, and almost resulting in his death, and the deaths of several npc's. We ended last session with him indicating that he intends to try again next session, despite literally everyone (all other players and every npc) telling him it is a stupid idea and not to do it. Tangents such as this is why a one-session objective has taken two and they're barely halfway done.

As a DM I procrastinate on material until the night before the session.

As a player, if I get on a streak of bad rolls I get REAL fucking salty about it.

I really struggle to keep my games below epic tier, even when the characters really shouldn't be dealing with that type of thing in-game.

I also get unreasonably annoyed with one of my players who can't be bothered to even look up basic setting details.
We're playing Shadowrun at the minute, his character had been to jail, which is where he met every one of his contacts. He's trying to argue that every single person in there was completely innocent. Not just justified, actually didn't commit a single crime ever. In a city where about a third of the population have to commit crime just to eat.
He wants to GM. I keep trying to send setting books, so far he hasn't read any of them. I still don't know if I should take him aside and put this right in front of him, or let him do it and call him out when he does things too horribly wrong.
I can't tell if this is out of concern for the group, or an ego-based "I've spent weeks reading detailed setting info on things that might never come up, you've read some of the mechanics and decided that rules all" thing.

I dont fluff up shit enemies I make them fight enemies appropriate to their level and then sprinkle in a few extra because it intensifies things a bit and martials deserve cool magic items in place of not being able to cast world shattering spells

settings -> use Legacy captcha
Monte Misma